Abstract
Membership of an extensive social network is imperative for human survival. However, maintaining network cohesion is particularly challenging for hunter–gatherers because they are dispersed over large home ranges and need to keep track of absent social partners for extended periods. The archaeological record suggests that compared to Neanderthals, contemporary modern humans maintained social ties between greater numbers of individuals over greater distances. I argue that such differences would have influenced neural development, driving differences in brain structure and the degree of social complexity that each taxon could sustain cognitively. Following recent suggestions that modern humans’ larger parietals might suggest an enhanced ability to create a ‘virtual inner world’, I hypothesise that this capacity allowed them to monitor larger numbers of absent social partners and thus maintain larger dispersed social networks than their Neanderthal counterparts. Larger social networks would have boosted the ability of modern humans to insure against local resource failure, sustain demographic stability and conserve cultural innovations.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Adams AM, Madhavan S, Simon D (2002) Women’s social networks and child survival in Mali. Soc Sci Med 54(2):165–178. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0277-9536(01)00017-x
Baron-Cohen S (2009) Autism: the empathizing–systemizing (E-S) theory. Ann N Y Acad Sci 1156(1):68–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04467.x
Bastir M, Rosas A, Kuroe K (2004) Petrosal orientation and mandibular ramus breadth: evidence for an integrated petroso-mandibular developmental unit. Am J Phys Anthropol 123(4):340–350. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.10313
Bastir M, Rosas A, Lieberman DE, O’Higgins P (2008) Middle cranial fossa anatomy and the origin of modern humans. Anat Rec Adv Integr Anat Evol Biol 291(2):130–140. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.20636
Bastir M, Rosas A, Gunz P, Pena-Melian A, Manzi G, Harvati K et al (2011) Evolution of the base of the brain in highly encephalized human species. Nat Commun 2:588
Binford L (2001) Constructing frames of reference: an analytical method for archaeological theory building using ethnographic and environmental data sets. University of California Press, Berkeley
Bruner E (2004) Geometric morphometrics and paleoneurology: brain shape evolution in the genus Homo. J Hum Evol 47(5):279–303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2004.03.009
Bruner E (2010a) Morphological differences in the parietal lobes within the human genus: a neurofunctional perspective. Curr Anthropol 51(s1):S77–S88. https://doi.org/10.1086/650729
Bruner E (2010b) The evolution of the parietal cortical areas in the human genus: between structure and cognition. In: Yuan M, Schick K, Toth N (eds) The human brain evolving: paleoneurological studies in honor of Ralph L. Holloway. Stone Age Institute, Gosport, IN, pp 83–96
Bruner E, Holloway RL (2010) A bivariate approach to the widening of the frontal lobes in the genus Homo. J Hum Evol 58(2):138–146
Bruner E, Iriki A (2016) Extending mind, visuospatial integration, and the evolution of the parietal lobes in the human genus. Quat Int 405(A):98–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.05.019
Bruner E, Ripani M (2008) A quantitative and descriptive approach to morphological variation of the endocranial base in modern humans. Am J Phys Anthropol 137(1):30–40. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.20837
Bruner E, Manzi G, Arsuaga JL (2003) Encephalization and allometric trajectories in the genus Homo: evidence from the Neanderthal and modern lineages. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100(26):15335–15340
Bruner E, Rangel de Lázaro G, De la Cuétara JM, Martín-Loeches M, Colom R, Jacobs HIL (2014) Midsagittal brain variation and MRI shape analysis of the precuneus in adult individuals. J Anat 224(4):367–376. https://doi.org/10.1111/joa.12155
Bruner E, Román FJ, de la Cuétara JM, Martin-Loeches M, Colom R (2015) Cortical surface area and cortical thickness in the precuneus of adult humans. Neuroscience 286:345–352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2014.11.063
Bruner E, Preuss TM, Chen X, Rilling JK (2016) Evidence for expansion of the precuneus in human evolution. Brain Struct Funct. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-015-1172-y
Bruner E, Spinapolice E, Burke A, Overmann K (2018) Visuospatial integration: paleoanthropological and archaeological perspectives. In: di Paolo LD, di Vincenzo F, Almeida A (eds) Evolution of primate social cognition. Springer, Cham
Burke A (2012) Spatial abilities, cognition and the pattern of Neanderthal and modern human dispersals. Quat Int 247:230–235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2010.10.029
Cantlon JF, Brannon EM, Carter EJ, Pelphrey KA (2006) Functional imaging of numerical processing in adults and 4-y-old children. PLoS Biol 4(5):e125. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0040125
Cavanna AE (2006) The precuneus: a review of its functional anatomy and behavioural correlates. Brain 129(3):564–583. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awl004
Conard NJ (2009) A female figurine from the basal Aurignacian of Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany. Nature 459(7244):248–252
Coolidge FL, Overmann KA (2012) Numerosity, abstraction, and the emergence of symbolic thinking. Curr Anthropol 53(2):204–225. https://doi.org/10.1086/664818
Coolidge FL, Wynn T (2005) Working memory, its executive functions, and the emergence of modern thinking. Camb Archaeol J 15(1):5–26. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774305000016
Culham JC, Valyear KF (2006) Human parietal cortex in action. Curr Opin Neurobiol 16(2):205–212. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2006.03.005
d’Errico F, Henshilwood C, Vanhaeren M, van Niekerk K (2005) Nassarius kraussianus shell beads from Blombos Cave: evidence for symbolic behaviour in the Middle Stone Age. J Hum Evol 48(1):3–24
de Hamilton AFC, Grafton ST (2006) Goal representation in human anterior intraparietal sulcus. J Neurosci 26(4):1133–1137
Deeley Q, Daly EM, Azuma R, Surguladze S, Giampietro V, Brammer MJ et al (2008) Changes in male brain responses to emotional faces from adolescence to middle age. NeuroImage 40(1):389–397. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.11.023
Dehaene S, Cohen L (2007) Cultural recycling of cortical maps. Neuron 56(2):384–398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2007.10.004
Devlin K (2000) The role of conceptual structure in human evolution. Brain 1867:1–12
Draganski B, Gaser C, Busch V, Schuierer G, Bogdahn U, May A (2004) Neuroplasticity: changes in grey matter induced by training. Nature 427(6972):311–312
Dumontheil I, Apperly IA, Blakemore S-J (2010) Online usage of theory of mind continues to develop in late adolescence. Dev Sci 13(2):331–338. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00888.x
Farizy C (1994) Spatial patterning of Middle Paleolithic sites. J Anthropol Archaeol 13(2):153–160
Finlayson C, Brown K, Blasco R, Rosell J, Negro JJ, Bortolotti GR et al (2012) Birds of a feather: Neanderthal exploitation of raptors and corvids. PLoS One 7(9):e45927. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0045927
Gamble C (1999) The Palaeolithic societies of Europe. Cambridge world archaeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Gómez-Robles A, Hopkins WD, Schapiro SJ, Sherwood CC (2015) Relaxed genetic control of cortical organization in human brains compared with chimpanzees. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112(48):14799–14804. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1512646112
Grove M, Pearce E, Dunbar RIM (2012) Fission-fusion and the evolution of hominin social systems. J Hum Evol 62(2):191–200
Gunz P, Neubauer S, Maureille B, Hublin J-J (2010) Brain development after birth differs between Neanderthals and modern humans. Curr Biol 20(21):R921–R922
Hayden B (2012) Neanderthal social structure? Oxf J Archaeol 31(1):1–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0092.2011.00376.x
Henrich J (2004) Demography and cultural evolution: how adaptive cultural processes can produce maladaptive losses: the Tasmanian case. Am Antiq 69(2):197–214
Herrmann E, Call J, Hernàndez-Lloreda MV, Hare B, Tomasello M (2007) Humans have evolved specialized skills of social cognition: the cultural intelligence hypothesis. Science 317(5843):1360–1366. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1146282
Hills TT, Todd PM, Lazer D, Redish AD, Couzin ID, Cognitive Search Research Group (2015) Exploration versus exploitation in space, mind, and society. Trends Cogn Sci 19(1):46–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2014.10.004.Exploration
Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB (2010) Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS Med 7(7):e1000316. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
Iaupuni SMK, Donato KM, Thompson-Colón T, Stainback M (2005) Counting on kin: social networks, social support, and child health status. Soc Forces 83(3):1137–1164
Iriki A, Taoka M (2012) Triadic (ecological, neural, cognitive) niche construction: a scenario of human brain evolution extrapolating tool use and language from the control of reaching actions. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 367(1585):10–23. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0190
Koenigs M, Barbey AK, Postle BR, Grafman J (2009) Superior parietal cortex is critical for the manipulation of information in working memory. J Neurosci 29(47):14980–14986. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3706-09.2009
Lalueza-Fox C, Rosas A, Estalrrich A, Gigli E, Campos PF, GarcÃa-Tabernero A et al (2011) Genetic evidence for patrilocal mating behavior among Neanderthal groups. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108(1):250–253
Land MF (2014) Do we have an internal model of the outside world? Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 369:20130045. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2013.0045
Langbroek M (2012) Trees and ladders: a critique of the theory of human cognitive and behavioural evolution in Palaeolithic archaeology. Quat Int 270:4–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2011.03.007
Lieberman DE, Ross CF, Ravosa MJ (2000) The primate cranial base: ontogeny, function, and integration. Am J Phys Anthropol Suppl 31:117–169
Maguire EA, Gadian DG, Johnsrude IS, Good CD, Ashburner J, Frackowiak RSJ, Frith CD (2000) Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 97(8):4398–4403
Maguire EA, Spiers HJ, Good CD, Hartley T, Frackowiak RSJ, Burgess N (2003) Navigation expertise and the human hippocampus: a structural brain imaging analysis. Hippocampus 13(2):250–259. https://doi.org/10.1002/hipo.10087
Maister L, Slater M, Sanchez-Vives MV, Tsakiris M (2015) Changing bodies changes minds: owning another body affects social cognition. Trends Cogn Sci 19(1):6–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2014.11.001
Mars RB, Neubert F-X, Noonan MP, Sallet J, Toni I, Rushworth MFS (2012) On the relationship between the “default mode network” and the “social brain”. Front Hum Neurosci 6:1–9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00189
McBrearty S, Brooks AS (2000) The revolution that wasn’t: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior. J Hum Evol 39:453–563
Mellars P, French JC (2011) Tenfold population increase in Western Europe at the Neanderthal to modern human transition. Science 333(6042):623–627. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1206930
Morley I (2013) The prehistory of music: human evolution, archaeology, and the origins of musicality. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Olson IR, McCoy D, Klobusicky E, Ross LA (2013) Social cognition and the anterior temporal lobes: a review and theoretical framework. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 8(2):123–133. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nss119
Pearce E (2014) Modelling mechanisms of social network maintenance in hunter–gatherers. J Archaeol Sci 50:403–413. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.08.004
Pearce E, Moutsiou T (2014) Using obsidian transfer distances to explore social network maintenance in late Pleistocene hunter–gatherers. J Anthropol Archaeol 36:12–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2014.07.002
Pearce E, Stringer C, Dunbar RIM (2013) New insights into differences in brain organization between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. Proc R Soc B Biol Sci 280(1758). https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.0168
Pearce E, Shuttleworth A, Grove M, Layton R (2014) The costs of being a high latitude hominin. In: Dunbar RIM, Gamble C, Gowlett J (eds) The Lucy project: benchmark papers. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 356–379
Pearce E, Launay J, Dunbar RIM (2015) The ice-breaker effect: singing mediates fast social bonding. R Soc Open Sci 2:150221. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150221
Peer M, Salomon R, Goldberg I, Blanke O, Arzy S (2015) Brain system for mental orientation in space, time, and person. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 112(35):11072–11077
Pike AWG, Hoffmann DL, García-Diez M, Pettitt PB, Alcolea J, De Balbín R et al (2012) U-series dating of Paleolithic art in 11 caves in Spain. Science 336(6087):1409–1413. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1219957
Powell A, Shennan S, Thomas MG (2009) Late Pleistocene demography and the appearance of modern human behavior. Science 324(5932):1298–1301. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1170165
Powell J, Lewis PA, Roberts N, Garcia-Finana M, Dunbar RIM (2012) Orbital prefrontal cortex volume predicts social network size: an imaging study of individual differences in humans. Proc R Soc B Biol Sci 279(1736):2157–2162. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2011.2574
Quallo MM, Price CJ, Ueno K, Asamizuya T, Cheng K, Lemon RN, Iriki A (2009) Gray and white matter changes associated with tool-use learning in macaque monkeys. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106(43):18379–18384
Roebroeks W, Sier MJ, Nielsen TK, De Loecker D, Parés JM, Arps CES, Mücher HJ (2012) Use of red ochre by early Neanderthals. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109(6):1889–1894
Sallet J, Mars RB, Noonan MP, Andersson JL, O’Reilly JX, Jbabdi S et al (2011) Social network size affects neural circuits in macaques. Science 334(6056):697–700. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1210027
Silk JB, Alberts SC, Altmann J (2003) Social bonds of female baboons enhance infant survival. Science 302(5648):1231–1234. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1088580
Smith TM, Tafforeau P, Reid DJ, Pouech J, Lazzari V, Zermeno JP et al (2010) Dental evidence for ontogenetic differences between modern humans and Neanderthals. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107(49):20923–20928. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1010906107
Sznajder B, Sabelis MW, Egas M (2012) How adaptive learning affects evolution: reviewing theory on the baldwin effect. Evol Biol 39(3):301–310. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11692-011-9155-2
Van Overwalle F (2009) Social cognition and the brain: a meta-analysis. Hum Brain Mapp 30(3):829–858. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20547
Vanhaeren M, D’Errico F (2006) Aurignacian ethno-linguistic geography of Europe revealed by personal ornaments. J Archaeol Sci 33(8):1105–1128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2005.11.017
Vann SD, Aggleton JP, Maguire EA (2009) What does the retrosplenial cortex do? Nat Rev Neurosci 10(11):792–802. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2733
Villa P, Roebroeks W (2014) Neanderthal demise: an archaeological analysis of the modern human superiority complex. PLoS One 9(4):e96424. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096424
Weinstein D, Launay J, Pearce E, Dunbar RIM, Stewart L (2015) Singing and social bonding: changes in connectivity and pain threshold as a function of group size. Evol Hum Behav. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.10.002
Whallon R (2006) Social networks and information: non-“utilitarian” mobility among hunter-gatherers. J Anthropol Archaeol 25(2):259–270
Wynn T, Overmann KA, Coolidge FL (2016) The false dichotomy: a refutation of the Neanderthal indistinguishability claim. J Anthropol Sci 94:1–21. https://doi.org/10.4436/JASS.94022
Zhou WX, Sornette D, Hill RA, Dunbar RIM (2005) Discrete hierarchical organization of social group sizes. Proc R Soc B Biol Sci 272(1561):439–444
Zilhão J, Angelucci DE, Badal-García E, D’Errico F, Daniel F, Dayet L et al (2010) Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neanderthals. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107(3):1023–1028
Acknowledgments
I thank Emiliano Bruner, Thomas Wynn, Kit Opie, Robin Dunbar, Prajñaketu Holden and Iain Morley for comments on various versions of this paper. This work was funded by the European Research Council (295663). The author declares no conflict of interest.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pearce, E. (2018). Neanderthals and Homo sapiens: Cognitively Different Kinds of Human?. In: Di Paolo, L.D., Di Vincenzo, F., De Petrillo, F. (eds) Evolution of Primate Social Cognition. Interdisciplinary Evolution Research, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93776-2_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93776-2_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-93775-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-93776-2
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)